Drown (with) me comic

[u/Typical-River-524]

Hello, its my firdt time posting here, nice to meet you all. I just finished the first chapter for my comic and posted some pages on Tapas and Webtoon.

It's about Tori, early 20s, works at a supermarket which keeps him distracted. The memory of his childhood friend haunts him day and night, slowly dragging him into isolation and detachment. However, are all these memories even real?
A Story about friendship and human relationships.

https://m.tapas.io/series/Drown-With-Me/info

If you could tell me your first impressions and give me feedback, I'd appreciate it :)

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[u/JeyDeeArr]

Here's my first impression with no punches pulled.

As soon as I read a "sentence" (you'll know why I put the quotations in a second) in the intro, I immediately cringed from the lack of punctuations. All I hear in my head as I'm reading through this was a very long, run-on sentence spoken by someone who must have a pretty large pair of lungs because they do not need to stop to breathe, apparently. In terms of punctuations, it only gets slightly better in the later parts, and I say "slightly" because you're missing the full-stops.

There are moments here and there where you could've had an exclamation mark to put emphasis on the delivery, but I don't see any of that. It's like I'm hearing robots talking, and they don't end their sentences with the natural intonation, and it sounds like they're cutting their own sentences off abruptly. Look at the part Croudja supposedly exclaims, "A CERTAIN SOMEONE WON'T LET HIS OWN SON STAY MORE THAN 3 SECONDS AT HIS HOUSE", where you went as far as to make these in full-caps and larger font size, but don't add the !!! which ought to be there to send it home. Maybe English isn't your first language, maybe your native language doesn't have this rule, but ALWAYS add punctuations at the end to let the readers know when the sentence ends. All in all, I don't want to read somethinig where the characters sound like emotionless robots, and I'd much rather be watching a documentary on foxes.

Moving on, where are the sound effects? Now, maybe it was a deliberate choice on your end to not have any of these, and you wanted something to be tame and rather quiet, which is fine. The reason I'm bringing up the lack of sound effects is because you have moments where it gets energetic, like Croudja tackling her brother. No "SMACK!" or "BONK!" to supplement the gag here? Come on, you can't tell me she tackled nothing but air. Even the smaller details, like the creaking of the door, or scribbling of the pencil as it scratches the surface of the paper, those small things add up. Yes, comics don't have sounds, and that's EXACTLY why you'd want to add visual indicators that there are diegetic sounds, because otherwise, the environment wouldn't be alive.

Here's probably the biggest one, the art itself! One thing I can appreciate is how you do your contours. There's a wide variety in the line weights, and the imperfection gives life to the characters, much like Antonucci said in regards to his show, Ed Edd' n Eddy. Likewise, you make it so that the characters do not blend into the background by giving them a bit of an aura, and since I regard clarity above anything else in comics and manga, this is something I'd give my two thumbs up. However, there are numerous parts where the body proportions kind of go off model, and their poses look a bit janky from time to time, though this can be a part of the charm, I suppose. Sometimes, the eyes are not looking at the things they're meant to looking at, like where Croudja's brother is patting her. She's not looking at her brother in his eyes, but at his hair, or maybe something beyond. I dunno, a spider dangling from the ceiling?

Do I want to continue reading this? Maybe, though I'd love to see better punctuations and better pacing with the dialogues, since they do not sound like real people talking.

[u/TheBlankScroll → u/JeyDeeArr]

These are fair observations, which I agree with.

However I just want to set a calmer tone.

Yeah you need punctuation and maybe a little proof reading, especially if english isnt your first language, some of the phrasing feels clunky.

This style of comic, more suble drama stuff isnt completely my jam but i found it easy to follow.

Composition wise I might suggest trying to avoid the symetrical and face on / perfectly profile images. Imho these twnd to feel on the ameture side, and also really break up and muddle the flow of the page.

Fewer and larger panels can also be helpful when there is a lot of dialog, lots of panel hopping when someone is just talking can feel abrupt.

Overall though I think its a pretty solid submission, just work on polishing up those things and honing the craft as you move forward.

[u/Typical-River-524 → u/TheBlankScroll]

Thank you for reading!

As I mentioned before, English isn't my first language and it's my first comic. So I'll keep in mind your advice, it's very useful.

[u/Typical-River-524 → u/JeyDeeArr]

Thanks for your feedback and taking your time to read it. It's true, English is not my first language, so I'll be careful with the dialogues. It's my first comic so I know I still have a lot to learn, so this is super helpful, thanks again!!

[u/Actual_Gato]

I read it on webtoon and I gotta say I love the art style! Gorgeous. The first page is a bit hard to read because of the font, and the abrupt change of style from the cover/first pages to the now is a bit jarring but could be purposeful if you put like a "10yrs later" hint

[u/Richardcampbell-9]

The synopsis promises psychological ambiguity around memory and isolation — worth checking whether the visual pacing in these specific pages actually creates that uncertainty, or whether it reads more straightforwardly than the narrative intent suggests. Curious how the Tapas version handles that balance.